23/ "Maduro's socialists sold food through the state-run chain of stores, but were unable to do anything about the black market and the opposition's alternative retail outlets.

22/ "1) A constant shortage of domestic food and problems selling it.

For years, the US had been constantly withholding food supplies to Venezuela through sanctions. And they constantly used this leverage.

21/ "That's the short version.

Digging deeper, I once delved into the details of the Venezuelan crisis, when Juan Guaidó was rocking the boat. The country had three strategic problems:

20/ "In short, the main lesson from what happened is that any political group will be quickly crushed if it exhausts its supporters with its domestic policies and fails to outmaneuver the opposition and external enemies in ensuring its citizens' basic needs, rights, and freedoms.

19/ "In Venezuela, there was no standard of living, no defence, and no money. And it's unlikely that the CIA agents were solely to blame for this."

'Vault 8', a serving Russian soldier in Ukraine, comes to a similar conclusion:

18/ "There's a quote. It was either by Mannerheim or Väinö Tanner:

'Before spending huge amounts of money on defence, you need to create a standard of living for the people that they will be willing to defend.'

17/ "In fact, corruption was the reason everything went so smoothly for the American military. They gave money to Maduro's entourage and the military. And not much, by American standards. And that's it...

16/ "Everyone was simply tired of the situation inside Venezuela. The beautiful slogans about an unyielding Bolivarian republic that would never break under American pressure didn't work in the face of economic crisis, rampant inflation, sanctions, and rampant corruption.

15/ Andrey Medvedev points the finger at the Venezuelans, saying that nobody in Caracas was willing to fight for Maduro:

"During the landing operation, no one fired at the American helicopters. No one wanted to defend Maduro or, ultimately, the country. Why?"

14/ …a special forces sortie into Venezuela?

❗️And "if we want to be like the Americans," then we first need to understand what exactly we want and what we can actually do with it.

Without sober analysis, there will be no sound conclusions, and without those, we'll end up with the same mistakes."

13/ "However, these tactical successes failed to translate into strategic gains. How could they have been otherwise, given that fewer aircraft were allocated for a full-scale ground operation than the US allocated for precision strikes and cover for…

12/ "➡️ There was also a largely unknown episode involving the Russian Armed Forces landing at Voznesensk airfield deep behind enemy lines in the Mykolaiv region. Once again, the paratroopers accomplished their mission, waiting several days for armoured groups to arrive.

11/ "➡️ A similar situation occurred in Kherson, where paratroopers were deployed 100 kilometers into enemy territory to secure the Antonivskyi Bridge. Counterattacks by larger Ukrainian Armed Forces units were repelled, allowing the group to cross the Dnipro.

10/ "➡️ The landing on Hostomel [airport] was carried out without any paratrooper losses, even under far worse conditions, when Mi-8s over the "Kyiv Sea" were attacked with MANPADS like MLRS. The airfield was occupied, and the enemy fled after the firefight.